The Blades are Ours

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west_yorks_blade

west_yorks_blade

PL next season, Europe following season
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Jul 22, 2014
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Would love to see us run like Dortmund.

They are majority owned by the fans, with voting rights on changes. Great atmospheres, low prices, enjoyable football and a real pride.

A typical model in Germany and its noticeable that the recent ESL disgrace didn't include any of their sides.

I hope that sorry spectacle and its craven greed becomes a catalyst for change throughout English football. It would be great to get rid of these rich, often foreign owners, with no genuine interest in the actual club and its supporters beyond monetising them.

Its not a business, its a football club and its OURS
 

west_yorks_blade said:
Would love to see us run like Dortmund.

They are majority owned by the fans, with voting rights on changes. Great atmospheres, low prices, enjoyable football and a real pride.

A typical model in Germany and its noticeable that the recent ESL disgrace didn't include any of their sides.

I hope that sorry spectacle and its craven greed becomes a catalyst for change throughout English football. It would be great to get rid of these rich, often foreign owners, with no genuine interest in the actual club and its supporters beyond monetising them.

Its not a business, its a football club and its OURS
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The whole elite pyramid would have to be the same though.
 
Gaini Blade said:
Just wondering how this season would have played out if this forum had been calling the shots this season!
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Be like the hokey kokey. Gerremin. Gerremout. Lundstram would be dead. The Vital Boys would’ve replaced Wilder with some Far Right conspiracy theorist/key note speaker.
 
Bloody mayhem probably. With the few on this forum we can't agree on how we go about letting the fans back in. The only thing that would have been sorted probably would have been the sale or release of John Lundstram.
 
Gin&Juice said:
Be like the hokey kokey. Gerremin. Gerremout. Lundstram would be dead. The Vital Boys would’ve replaced Wilder with some Far Right conspiracy theorist/key note speaker.
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I'm thinking the kop pillars would be relocated to the car park as giant flag poles and it would be curtains (not literally I hope) for the pink shirts.
 
There obviously isn’t a vote on every day to day decision.
 
It’s a nice idea and as you say clearly there wouldn’t be a decision on every matter - and there’s still a board and a committee etc that would have to be appointed and presumably they would make decisions that not everybody liked.

The main issue though is that the ownership model in England is so entrenched that it would take a massive paradigm shift (ooh get me using fancy terms on a Blades message board - twats thread for me) for clubs to even consider fan ownership - those clubs that are fan run ‘tend’ to be ones who have needed such a shift due to extreme circumstances ie club is either folder, bust, or on death row.
 
Gimli said:
It’s a nice idea and as you say clearly there wouldn’t be a decision on every matter - and there’s still a board and a committee etc that would have to be appointed and presumably they would make decisions that not everybody liked.

The main issue though is that the ownership model in England is so entrenched that it would take a massive paradigm shift (ooh get me using fancy terms on a Blades message board - twats thread for me) for clubs to even consider fan ownership - those clubs that are fan run ‘tend’ to be ones who have needed such a shift due to extreme circumstances ie club is either folder, bust, or on death row.
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So potential contender in S6 then....?
 
Gimli said:
It’s a nice idea and as you say clearly there wouldn’t be a decision on every matter - and there’s still a board and a committee etc that would have to be appointed and presumably they would make decisions that not everybody liked.

The main issue though is that the ownership model in England is so entrenched that it would take a massive paradigm shift (ooh get me using fancy terms on a Blades message board - twats thread for me) for clubs to even consider fan ownership - those clubs that are fan run ‘tend’ to be ones who have needed such a shift due to extreme circumstances ie club is either folder, bust, or on death row.
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Yeah absolutely. As you say it needs a paradigm shift. I’m thinking that the ESL debacle could provide that. After all, even supporters of those ‘big six’ were up in arms.

Boris was willing to pitch in on that one before it collapsed. Maybe changes could be agreed across the board by ruling bodies and legislated?
 

Gimli said:
Tango man installed as interim chairman, Neil from porktalk as chief exec.

What could go wrong?


Sid James meme...
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Non league football quicker than you could say "non league football."
 
Cheesebored said:
How much are you willing to invest, financially?
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That’s the issue, isn’t it. It is a business and it’s not ours. So the first problem would be obtaining the 51% of the clubs from the existing owners. I’d be shocked if they were prepared to give it away so presumably they’d have to sell. I’d be quite surprised if the were prepared to sell, so there would have to be some kind of government action, like a compulsory purchase scheme.

Then, there would be the question of whether the supporters could afford to buy the 51% from the government. If you valued us at £50m, as a championship and you could get 25,000 supporters to buy in, they’d have to pay around a grand each.

Then, as PA would have little interest in funding the losses of a club that he doesn’t even control, we’d have to run on a break even basis, as even if we could find 25,000 supporters with a spare grand, I can’t imagine them wanting to put money in each season, on top of the usual ticket prices.

Long term, if all clubs were fan owned, or they own 51%, it should be a more sustainable model, every club would be highly incentivised to not lose money.

We just need the government to, effectively, “nationlise” football in this country and underwrite any losses they incur if the supporters can’t afford to buy the club (which is quite likely with a lot of PL clubs as they’re worth so much). Using taxpayer’s money.
 
BushBlade said:
That’s the issue, isn’t it. It is a business and it’s not ours. So the first problem would be obtaining the 51% of the clubs from the existing owners. I’d be shocked if they were prepared to give it away so presumably they’d have to sell. I’d be quite surprised if the were prepared to sell, so there would have to be some kind of government action, like a compulsory purchase scheme.

Then, there would be the question of whether the supporters could afford to buy the 51% from the government. If you valued us at £50m, as a championship and you could get 25,000 supporters to buy in, they’d have to pay around a grand each.

Then, as PA would have little interest in funding the losses of a club that he doesn’t even control, we’d have to run on a break even basis, as even if we could find 25,000 supporters with a spare grand, I can’t imagine them wanting to put money in each season, on top of the usual ticket prices.

Long term, if all clubs were fan owned, or they own 51%, it should be a more sustainable model, every club would be highly incentivised to not lose money.

We just need the government to, effectively, “nationlise” football in this country and underwrite any losses they incur if the supporters can’t afford to buy the club (which is quite likely with a lot of PL clubs as they’re worth so much). Using taxpayer’s money.
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(Wishful thinking warning)

Or, just take the 51% for free and tell them to agree or we'll take 100%. What's Abdullah going to do about it besides whinge? We can't trust these parasites with our club or the sport.
 
west_yorks_blade said:
Would love to see us run like Dortmund.

They are majority owned by the fans, with voting rights on changes. Great atmospheres, low prices, enjoyable football and a real pride.

A typical model in Germany and its noticeable that the recent ESL disgrace didn't include any of their sides.

I hope that sorry spectacle and its craven greed becomes a catalyst for change throughout English football. It would be great to get rid of these rich, often foreign owners, with no genuine interest in the actual club and its supporters beyond monetising them.

Its not a business, its a football club and its OURS
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The German model is exactly how we should be looking. Unfortunately, buying out owners (maybe not so much us) but billionaires will want billions to walk away. Look at other community run clubs - AFC Wimbledon example. With the fans running the clubs in German, tickets, travel and match day costs is kept low. Hence they have best attendances in world.
 
As other posters have explained, the route to 50+1 is complicated in English football. With the current ownership model so entrenched. A first step would be those clubs which go into Administration. To come out of Administration, and retain your league position, you'd need to have a 50+1 model, which has to be kept going forward. A second step would be promotion to the EFL. Only clubs with a 50+1 model would be promoted from the National League.

I'm acutely aware that both create an inequality. With existing big clubs continuing as they are. While "minnows" have 50+1 imposed on them. But, we have to start somewhere.
 
Cheesebored said:
How much are you willing to invest, financially?
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BushBlade said:
That’s the issue, isn’t it. It is a business and it’s not ours. So the first problem would be obtaining the 51% of the clubs from the existing owners. I’d be shocked if they were prepared to give it away so presumably they’d have to sell. I’d be quite surprised if the were prepared to sell, so there would have to be some kind of government action, like a compulsory purchase scheme.

Then, there would be the question of whether the supporters could afford to buy the 51% from the government. If you valued us at £50m, as a championship and you could get 25,000 supporters to buy in, they’d have to pay around a grand each.

Then, as PA would have little interest in funding the losses of a club that he doesn’t even control, we’d have to run on a break even basis, as even if we could find 25,000 supporters with a spare grand, I can’t imagine them wanting to put money in each season, on top of the usual ticket prices.

Long term, if all clubs were fan owned, or they own 51%, it should be a more sustainable model, every club would be highly incentivised to not lose money.

We just need the government to, effectively, “nationlise” football in this country and underwrite any losses they incur if the supporters can’t afford to buy the club (which is quite likely with a lot of PL clubs as they’re worth so much). Using taxpayer’s money.
Click to expand...

That's not quite how it works in Germany -- fans don't own 51% of the shares in their clubs, they own 51% of the voting rights in their clubs. That's because most clubs are set up as associations (Vereine), not as private companies that require capital investment from their shareholders.

A German Verein is essentially a charitable association. Think of it like this: if you want to set up a five-a-side team, you can do so without your mates needing to contribute any kind of shareholder capital. If you want to add some more members or someone decides to leave, there's no need for those people to buy into your team, or for you to buy them out. Vereine can however have some kind of voting system for their members: you can draw up a set of rules on how you're going to decide whether to play at Graves Park or Concord.

German clubs continue to be associations to this day rather than limited companies. Private investment started to be allowed from the late 1990s onwards, but laws were put in place to make sure that fans always continued to have 50+1 percent of the voting rights in their clubs. To continue the example above, some wealthy local businessman could come in to buy fancy boots and kits for your five-a-side team, but the law prevents them from acquiring more than 49% of the voting rights in your association, whatever they decide to invest.

The "nationalisation" point you made more or less still stands: this system has grown organically in Germany, but to implement something like this in English football, a legislative change is needed to essentially force clubs to become non-profit associations rather than private companies run for nothing but profit, and control would need to be wrested from shareholders who contribute hard cash and given to members who contribute nothing but income from tickets, kit sales, pie sales and so on. You'd essentially be telling the UAE, Roman Abramovich or Prince Abdullah that however many billions they invest, they will never be able to exert full control over the organisation they've 'bought'.

In other words, you'd need to piss off some seriously wealthy people to get anything like 50+1 implemented in a place where it hasn't grown naturally over time... We can dream though! 😅
 
west_yorks_blade said:
Would love to see us run like Dortmund.

They are majority owned by the fans, with voting rights on changes. Great atmospheres, low prices, enjoyable football and a real pride.

A typical model in Germany and its noticeable that the recent ESL disgrace didn't include any of their sides.

I hope that sorry spectacle and its craven greed becomes a catalyst for change throughout English football. It would be great to get rid of these rich, often foreign owners, with no genuine interest in the actual club and its supporters beyond monetising them.

Its not a business, its a football club and its OURS
Click to expand...
Its always been a business
 
ATL Recs said:
Its always been a business
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Why should it be though? National parks, museums and the NHS aren't. Do you not think football is important enough? Is Sheffield United not important enough to you?
 
The money received by the old Plc for the ground etc - Now Cutlers Holdings Limited - has been used to repay the debt to Scarborough. No dividends again......
 

BelgianBlade said:
That's not quite how it works in Germany -- fans don't own 51% of the shares in their clubs, they own 51% of the voting rights in their clubs. That's because most clubs are set up as associations (Vereine), not as private companies that require capital investment from their shareholders.

A German Verein is essentially a charitable association. Think of it like this: if you want to set up a five-a-side team, you can do so without your mates needing to contribute any kind of shareholder capital. If you want to add some more members or someone decides to leave, there's no need for those people to buy into your team, or for you to buy them out. Vereine can however have some kind of voting system for their members: you can draw up a set of rules on how you're going to decide whether to play at Graves Park or Concord.

German clubs continue to be associations to this day rather than limited companies. Private investment started to be allowed from the late 1990s onwards, but laws were put in place to make sure that fans always continued to have 50+1 percent of the voting rights in their clubs. To continue the example above, some wealthy local businessman could come in to buy fancy boots and kits for your five-a-side team, but the law prevents them from acquiring more than 49% of the voting rights in your association, whatever they decide to invest.

The "nationalisation" point you made more or less still stands: this system has grown organically in Germany, but to implement something like this in English football, a legislative change is needed to essentially force clubs to become non-profit associations rather than private companies run for nothing but profit, and control would need to be wrested from shareholders who contribute hard cash and given to members who contribute nothing but income from tickets, kit sales, pie sales and so on. You'd essentially be telling the UAE, Roman Abramovich or Prince Abdullah that however many billions they invest, they will never be able to exert full control over the organisation they've 'bought'.

In other words, you'd need to piss off some seriously wealthy people to get anything like 50+1 implemented in a place where it hasn't grown naturally over time... We can dream though! 😅
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Sounds great!!
 
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